Backwards Boy
by Jake Cocoa
Summary: You should have known. But you didn't, though the cold wind whispering through the dust tells you differently, humming 'I told you so' into your ear, with the laughing voice of fate.


You should have known.

You should have known the moment that she wrapped her fingers around yours. You should have known the instant that you had looked into her eyes. You should have known when her hand dug into your chest, drawing blood, and you should have known as you cried out because it had _hurt, _and you didn't know _why, _until you looked at her face and saw her pale, shaking, and watched as she flung you away and you should have known that this would happen when she smiled at you in the seconds before her body was methodically and strategically broken and god dammit _you-should-have-known._

_You should have known better._

But you didn't, but the cold wind whispering through the dust tells you differently, humming _'I told you so' _into your ear, the laughing voice of fate as you kneel, raking your memory, to wonder if you had ever known, ever heard it before, and you _should have _but you just don't know if you _did, _but does it even matter because _she is fucking dead godammit? _Because it _doesn't matter, _all that matters is that you're alive and she's-

Dead.

Dead.

_Dead._

You take her hand and hold it to your chest, over where blood trickles in a jagged circle. Her fingers are cold. A thin layer of soot covers her nails, and you try to rub it off but the nail splinters, so you just close your eyes and touch your nose to her fingertips.

Which are cold.

Too cold.

And it's funny, and it's funny because you were always able to deal with the cold, and it was never something that could hurt you or that you were afraid of, and in fact your body tends to be chilled normally, and it's funny because this is the first time in your life that the cold has ever actually touched your bones, and it's the first time you've actually wished for warmth.

Your grasp tightens until her fingers are crushed together. Another nail breaks off. You lace your fingers through her other hand, but hers is rubbery and frail, and no matter how hard you grip her hands they never hold back. You're fully bent over now, your nose into the vee of her neck, lips resting a hair away from her collarbone, and your ear is pressed flat to the side of her neck, and you should hear a pulse, but there is none, none, none, and her body is so silent, no air, no blood, no beat, not even a drop of rain, there's just the girl with the tangled blue hair and the twisted limbs and the smile on her face and the broken nails.

The first tear drips from your chin, running down to her shoulder. Her smile seems to fade a little, or maybe that's just death stiffening her body. Another drop lands over your laced hands, her bones beginning to lock around yours.

And you think that maybe, maybe you should try to wake her up. Because it's like that tale of the sleeping princess, and she's beautiful, and her skin is pale, and her lips are blood red, and she's _sleeping, _and you think that you should kiss her.

But you know that you can't, because you were never the prince. Her prince was somewhere away when she died, and will never come in time before she rots. And it hurts because _her prince will be too late to save her. _And you weren't the prince. You were the knife in her ribs, the apple, which she took with a grin gracing her features and pressed her lips to your skin and _broke you, _right before you broke her.

And she never saw it coming until she died, but you should have known.

And that's why you can't kiss her. That's why you can't wake her. That's why she's going to die and stay dead and that's why it's going to be _all your fault._

But it already was, wasn't it?

And it seems that once again you really fucked it up. Once again you showed your backward ways.

Because you were born feet first, and as a child you always laughed instead of cried (until you were taught sorrow and then you only ever cried), and loneliness was your only friend. And you were the boy who preferred the winter and disliked the smell of spring on the air, and you were the boy who preferred the rainy days to the sunny ones because you were the only one who ever realized that the rain was beautiful. And you were the boy who never loved Aphrodite but instead loved the ocean that she rose from, and you were the boy who never gave the woman that he loved a reason to live he only ever became her reason to_ die _and who couldn't save her and couldn't raise her, the boy who never realized how much he loved her until she was _gone. _

Little.

Bitter.

_Backwards._

**_Boy._**

And the life of the backwards boy was never so bad, at first. The little brass boys in the clock shops would agree, wound up by passers- by and never wishing to become real boys. Because speeding through life in reverse only makes the colors spin brighter and the sounds warble sharper, and you see the sunrise when everyone else sees the sunset and just when you think that maybe it's _good, _maybe it's _better _than the way everyone else sees life, that, that is the time that you tumble off the table's edge. And even then, falling down feels wonderful and infinite and beautiful, but the little backwards boys can never remember the fact that they still cannot fly, and so they always, _always _fall to the ground and shatter.

It is a fate that cannot be avoided.

The backwards boys will always break, and you think that you should have told her that, there are some things in life that always happen, no matter how hard you wish otherwise. No matter how many times you tell the snowflakes that they would never melt if they never fell, they will always drop, because that is what they do, and you can't tell the earth to stop spinning or the ocean to stop flowing or the sun to stop setting, because even if it may be unhealthy it's all controlled by something bigger and better than you. And you should have told her that some people call it fate but you know that it's just gravity, and the _reason _for it all, the reason that everything in the world must topple is because everything believes in something little, and for you, you believed in her. You believed in loving her. And you should have told her that you would fall (for her) and that you would break (hearts) and that someday, you would die, and because of the luck of the backwards boys you could never die together.

You should have told her that even though you knew all that, there is nothing in this world that could stop you from falling in love with her.

Even though you knew better.

(But you never told her that.)

Your sobs come faster now, until you can barely breathe. And it builds inside of you and you can't let it out in just tears, and so you _scream. _You scream and the world screams back at you, a raw, animalistic noise, until your world is almost all pain but the burning and the knives under your skin feel so good.

You scream again, and it could almost be mistaken for a screech of joy, filling up your lungs and coming out in a clean, short burst. But when it is echoed back it feels as though the world is mocking you, mocking the joy you once held in your hands that now only hold corpses. The laughter rings and rings and almost sounds like a bell, and sometimes like a breeze, and sometimes, the times that it hurts the most, it seems like gentle rain, running over you over and over before sinking into the ground, leaving you shivering.

The third and last time that you scream, it hurts.

It sounds- it sounds the way that a cry would, if an anchor was plunged down your throat and ripped out again, tearing apart your heart and pulling out all your happiness with it, leaving you empty. It is too thick, too full, and trembles in the air, before it falls apart into gasping, heaving sobs.

The sound leaves you alone, shaking.

It leaves you alone, curled on the ground, the wretched hands of the girl you love locked around yours in death's final grip.

And her fingernails are breaking.

And her skin is cold.

And her hair, blue like the sky, is fading and tangled.

(And you should have known.)


End file.
